The Prologues and Ends of Piers Plowman A

Drawing upon Ralph Hanna’s extensive work on the versions of PPl, Middleton discusses both the prologues and ends of late A text manuscripts by tracing their ‘textual mechanics’ (p. 218). Beginning with a focus on the use of the term ‘prologus’ in these manuscripts, Middleton profiles both scribal intentions as well as the effects of their textual additions on the form of the text and so examines the readings they produce. Middleton considers how scribes used a range of material in order to address local problems of genre and speaker and the textual mechanics of revision to navigate alternatives at the cut ends of the text.